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2) Your Mindful Garden 2) Your Mindful Garden Your Mindful Garden was recently introduced by CBeebies, a BBC children’s network. The app-based game has nurturing activities like mindful breathing, movement, and noticing emotions. Bonus: It’s narrated by award-winning actor (and mental health advocate) Stephen Fry. 3) FitMind 3) FitMind FitMind is a vigorous meditation trainer delivered via iPhone. It teaches the science behind the practice, tracks your progress, and provides numerous levels and daily challenges to keep you mindfully engaged....

Even if I am having a meltdown, am falling apart, am going ballistic or retreating into a collapsed isolation, I can remember that I am a human being, and that all human beings have similar reactions to life’s disappointments, difficulties, and even disasters. I can hold myself with compassion and care, finding the courageous action I need to meet the current challenges or crises. Many mindfulness practices use the wisdom of our bodies to return us to a state of ease and calm, no matter the cause of disruption to our well-being—allowing us to hold, to accept, and to work with anything at all....

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 275 articles, many chapters and reviews and edited 13 books....

A more sophisticated emotion-tracking app surfaced this summer: Moodnotes ($3.99 for IOS) allows you to journal your feelings so you can better understand and relate to them. Created by clinical psychologists Edrick Dorian and Drew Erhardt of Thriveport and London design studio Ustwo, Moodnotes is based in cognitive therapy, a form of therapy where psychologist and patient work together to evaluate patterns of thinking that are unhelpful and work to change them....

When we returned, about half past one, no cars were in the lot and the interior seemed very dark. Still, the Open sign was lit, so hesitantly we went in. We looked around the empty room. To our left, demarcated by a short wooden divider, was a raised floor banquet area where several foot-high tables were turned up against the wall. Before us and to our right were ordinary tables and booths, made of varnished pine, not one set for dining....